


Shiny Things on Grey Days

by QueenNeehola



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-16 15:06:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7272958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenNeehola/pseuds/QueenNeehola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kageyama Tobio isn't getting on as well as he'd like with his middle school volleyball team.  After a particularly bad day at practice, he finds himself in tears in a quiet park.  There, he meets an unlikely new friend who is maybe more than they seem to be...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shiny Things on Grey Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talonyth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/talonyth/gifts).



> happy birthday my darling stephy!!!! i hope you like this as much as i like you!!! (which is a lot. a WHOLE LOT. so you probably could never like it that much but i hope you like it even a little bit!!!!)

The first time Kageyama Tobio meets the crow, it is cool, just breezy enough to be annoying, and he is crying.

 

They aren’t sobs, nor weeps—they are the quiet, sniffling tears of confusion, frustration; the kinds of emotions that he doesn’t yet know how to express by any other means than the hot prickling in his nose and the watery blurring of his vision.

Kageyama remembers the coach’s voice ordering him off the court, the eyes of his teammates as he looked back at them, like they didn’t understand him, they _don’t_ , _why can’t they_ —  His nails dig into his palms and he curls in on himself, the wood of the bench he sits on rubbing rough and damp against his school uniform.  He’s silently thankful the weather is just on the right side of miserable enough to keep people away from the park, away from _him_ , so no one hears the loud, ugly sniff he draws in, trying to will away the next set of tears.

 

 

A loud _CAW_ close by makes him jump, and he looks up, rubbing an already wet sleeve over his face haphazardly.

Opposite where he is sitting there is a public bin, next to it a small pile of rubbish that didn’t quite make it to its destination, and next to that…a crow.  It’s a fairly small, bedraggled-looking thing, perhaps not fully grown, with one tail feather sticking out in an awkward direction, and as it regards Kageyama from side-on in the way that birds do, Kageyama regards it right back, blinking slowly.

It caws again, right _at_ him, and Kageyama shifts hesitantly.  _Is it going to attack me?_ , he wonders.  _Is this its territory?  Do birds even have territory?_   Whatever the answer, Kageyama finds relief in the temporary distraction from his thoughts, even if he doesn’t quite realise it.

 

The crow plunges its beak into the trash next to it suddenly, and Kageyama lets out the breath he hadn’t known he was holding, only to have it catch back in his throat again as the crow draws its head back after a few moments of rustling.  A small grey prize is grasped in its beak, but what it is exactly, Kageyama can’t make out.

 

The bird takes what looks like a very deliberate step towards the boy on the bench, and Kageyama stills completely.  It takes another step, and a couple more, until it is no more than a metre away from him, and he watches it carefully.  He feels like it is watching him in much the same way.

And then, it drops the item, caws once more, and flies away.

 

Bewildered, Kageyama tries to watch it go, but it disappears into the trees behind him.  His heart is beating hard in his chest for some reason, but he isn’t crying any more, at least.

He stands up, drags his damp sleeve across his nose again, and walks over to the item the crow dropped.  It is a ring-pull from a can of juice.  He stares at it for a moment as he mulls over his encounter with the strange bird, nudges it with the toe of his shoe, then kicks it back towards the rubbish pile and heads for home with his hands stuffed in his pockets.

 

* * *

 

The next day, volleyball practice is awkward, and Kageyama hates that he’s relieved when he can go home.  He decides to walk through the park again, even though it isn’t on his usual route home, and it’s drizzling, and he doesn’t have an umbrella.

 

The crow is perched on top of the bin this time, and Kageyama pretends he doesn’t start when he sees it.  _Maybe it’s not the same one_ , he thinks, but it has the same odd tail feather, so he thinks it must be.

Kageyama slows as he approaches it, unsure why he doesn’t just walk on by, and eventually stops a few feet away.  It has something held under one of its feet this time, something small and grey like the ring-pull from yesterday, but different in shape.

The crow caws, spreads its wings and flaps off from the bin, landing on the bench instead.  The item it held is left behind, sliding off the top of the bin from the movement, and landing at the base of it.  Now unobscured, Kageyama can see it is a paperclip.  He looks over at the crow, which is silently regarding him again, he thinks.

“I thought it was magpies that liked shiny things,” he says, and he doesn’t know why he’s talking to a bird, but here he is.  It doesn’t say anything back, obviously.  It’s a _bird_.  The unease he felt about practice has eased, though, and as the crow flies away, this time its cry sounds like a _see you tomorrow_ to Kageyama’s ears.  Maybe he’s going crazy.

 

 

He does see it tomorrow however, and almost every day after that for several weeks.  Every time he walks through the park it is there, in that one spot with the bench and the bin, and Kageyama starts to think the pile of trash wasn’t left by a person too lazy to throw it away properly but by the crow itself: that it’s the crow’s collection.  He’s definitely going crazy, he thinks; making up a story like that about a _bird_.

But every day Kageyama is presented with a new shiny trinket, as if the bird is showing them off, and every day Kageyama gets a little bit closer to it before it flies away, until one day, armed with half a loaf of bread he’d bought on the way from school tucked under his arm, he entices it closer and closer until it is pecking away at the food right by his feet.  He talks to it sometimes, making comments about the questionable quality of the items it presents to him, even telling it about his day, about how his volleyball skills are improving.  He’s started to care less and less about how crazy he may or may not be.

And every day, although he doesn’t notice, spending time with his bird-friend and its marvellous assortment of metallic knickknacks takes his thoughts further and further away from the fights with his teammates, the murmurs from his upperclassman about his attitude, the creeping dread of isolation he has begun to feel on a daily basis.

 

* * *

 

Until, one day, the crow isn’t there.

 

It’s understandable, Kageyama tells himself.  It’s a wild animal.  It could have moved territories, have eggs or chicks to take care of…o-or it could have gotten hurt, or—

Kageyama sits down heavily on the bench, the small bag of trail mix he’d picked up clutched in his sweating palm.  He waits, and waits, until the lamps lining the path flicker on, until his stomach is rumbling, until the melancholy he hasn’t felt for a long while has settled back into his bones like it never left.

When he does leave, he throws the bag of trail mix atop the rubbish pile.

 

 

The crow doesn’t come the next day, or the day after, and as Kageyama heads through the park yet again with an air of frantic hope towards the bench, _his_ bench on yet another drizzling grey day two weeks later he wonders why he still comes at all.

 

His heart almost leaps out of his chest when he sees someone sitting there.

 

It isn’t as if the park is _abandoned_ — Kageyama had seen plenty of dog-walkers, old couples on strolls, and groups of teenagers hanging out after school on his walks through the place, but it is the first time he’s ever seen a person sitting _there_ , in _his_ spot.

His heart sinks at the sight and he speeds up, keeping his head low and intending to hurry past and head home, putting his encounters with the weird crow out of his mind forever, but in his effort not to pay any attention to the person on the bench he misses how they stand up as he approaches, doesn’t notice their hand reaching out for him until their fingers close on his wrist, and he jerks to a stop.

 

“Hey,” the person greets as Kageyama turns to face them, and their voice is as light and airy as their smile, “I was waiting for you.”

“Uh,” Kageyama says in reply, hesitantly trying to pull his wrist back, “Do I…know you…?”

“Yes, of course!”  It’s a boy, around the same age as Kageyama, maybe a little younger based on his height and scrawny frame.  Aside from his excited grin, his most noticeable feature is his orange hair, sticking up in all directions defiantly against the rain.  It feels kind of familiar, but Kageyama is adamant he has never seen the boy before in his life.

“Um, I don’t think—”

“Oh!  Here!” the boy cuts Kageyama off, and finally drops his wrist to reach into his back pocket instead, producing a small round metallic object.  He holds it up, and Kageyama can see it’s a bottle cap, shining red even in the dull light of the grey afternoon.  “Isn’t it neat?  I was thinking of adding it to my collection!”

“I gue—” Kageyama starts to say, but the boy’s words click into focus suddenly.  “Wait…wha— collection?”

“Yeah!”  The boy hops ( _hops_!) around Kageyama to the pile of trash next to the bin, gesturing at it happily.  “I never got to show it off to anyone before, everyone always just walked right past.  But not you!  And you were crying, so I thought maybe if I showed you my shiny things it’d make you feel better!”

Kageyama wanted to interject that he was _not_ crying, even though he had been ( _and how did he know about that anyway?_ ), but he was too baffled at his current situation, and the strange boy just kept on talking without letting him get a word in.

“Thanks for all the food by the way!  I gave the fruits and nuts and stuff to my little sister, she loves them!  And can you tell me more about that ‘valley-bawl’ thing?  It sounds fun!”

The boy finally falls silent, and when Kageyama regains enough presence of mind to stop staring vacantly at the rubbish pile-stroke-collection-of-fanciful-sparklies, his gaze travels to the boy’s face instead, and Kageyama finds he’s being regarded intently out of the corner of the boy’s brown eyes, a gesture so strikingly familiar that everything slots into place all at once.

 

“Oh, and I guess you didn’t understand me when I told you the first time, but since we speak the same language now, I’ll tell you again!” the boy is saying, and Kageyama finally sees his hair as feathers, his arms that spread out excitedly as wings.  “My name’s Hinata!”

**Author's Note:**

> i lowkey want to turn this into a mini-series that vaguely follows canon except hinata is a crow shapeshifter and knows nothing about volleyball but goes to karasuno with kageyama anyway


End file.
